Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has finally issued a warning for investors regarding perpetual securities. This is a follow up to the previous article when MAS was just ‘concerned’ about the perps. However, it seems somewhat late as the investors have already invested in the perpetual securities, especially the Genting retail perp bond. MAS should have issued the warning during the time period when Genting was marketing the perp bonds to retail investors, so that the investors could have had a heads up on exactly what they were getting into. In my opinion, the warning could have come sooner, especially since this time they were marketing to ordinary people instead of institutions and accredited investors.

Like the previous article, they mentioned the interest rate risks due to the high duration. One thing that ought to change is that perps are currently marketed as ‘Excluded Investment Product’ under the Securities ...